It’s been a busy period of investment in our core network systems since my last blog so I’d like to update you on progress.
Following the two service outages we had last month we fixed the network components that caused the issues, we also made the decision to increase our spend this year, bringing forward investment plans to improve overall system capacity and resilience.
I can confirm we have now successfully completed this phase of our upgrade programme.
The core elements we’ve replaced are the MSC/HLR which are the key parts of the network that store your network identity and route all your calls and texts.
We’ve been monitoring performance since the new kit went in and I’m pleased to report significant improvements. For example during peak usage hours we have seen usage reach only 18% of available capacity compared with the 80% utilisation we were seeing on the original kit.
To give you a bit of context, to complete this phase of the upgrade we’ve made a £2.5m investment in our network systems. In doing so we have fixed the root causes of the issues we had and crucially given our systems plenty of headroom for growth.
There are a few, more minor enhancements we will make before Christmas so our focus is now on the work we plan to carry out throughout 2014 to ensure we deliver you a great level of service. To that end I’ll update you all again with our investment plans early in the New Year.
